Palm Patter started in a cramped apartment living room in Portland, Oregon, where the coffee table had long since been sacrificed to card fans, sponge balls, and three battered juggling clubs with the paint chipped off from one too many drops. That living room belonged to Dez Calloway, a close-up magician who spent a decade performing table-to-table at restaurants, and his friend Mira Solheim, a former circus-arts instructor who could keep seven rings in the air while explaining the physics behind it. Between gigs, the two of them were constantly fielding the same question from students and strangers alike: "What should I actually buy?" The magic and juggling markets are flooded with gimmicks, reprints, and products that look flawless in a promotional video but fall apart the moment you try them under real lights, in front of a real audience. Dez and Mira got tired of watching beginners waste money on decks that warped after a week or clubs that wobbled off-axis. In 2021, they started writing down their honest opinions, and Palm Patter was born.
Who We Are
Today, Palm Patter is run by a small, tight-knit team of performers, teachers, and lifelong hobbyists. Dez focuses on card magic, mentalism, and close-up sleight of hand, drawing on years of professional restaurant and bar gigs where tricks either worked under pressure or got exposed instantly. Mira oversees everything juggling and object manipulation, from props and balance boards to numbers juggling and diabolo, having taught at youth circus programs and performed in regional variety shows. We've since brought on a couple of contributing reviewers, including a stage illusionist and a competitive club-passer, so that every category on the site is evaluated by someone who genuinely practices that discipline rather than someone just reading the box.
We're not a faceless content farm. We perform. We teach workshops. We've bombed on stage and we've nailed the big reveal. That lived experience shapes every review we publish.
Our Founding Story
The name "Palm Patter" comes from two fundamentals we both obsess over: the palm, the quiet physical skill that makes a trick invisible, and the patter, the words and timing that make an audience actually care. We believe great magic and great juggling both require technical mastery and the showmanship to sell it, and we wanted a site name that honored both halves of the craft. What began as a shared document of product notes for our own students slowly grew into structured reviews, then buying guides, then full category roundups. We kept the same rule from day one: if we wouldn't recommend it to a student standing in front of us, we don't publish it as a recommendation here.
How We Review and Choose Products
Every product featured on Palm Patter goes through a hands-on evaluation process before it earns a spot on the site. We don't rely on manufacturer claims, marketing copy, or secondhand impressions.
- We buy or source the actual product. In most cases we purchase items ourselves at retail price. When a manufacturer sends a review unit, we disclose that clearly in the post and still hold the product to the same standard as anything we paid for.
- We test in realistic conditions. Cards get shuffled hundreds of times to check durability and finish. Gimmicked props get examined for angle sensitivity and reset speed. Juggling equipment gets dropped, repeatedly, on purpose, to check how it holds up to the abuse real practice sessions involve.
- We evaluate across consistent criteria, including build quality and materials, difficulty curve for the stated skill level, instructional clarity (is the included tutorial actually teachable?), value relative to price, and how the product performs in front of a live audience or practice partner, not just in isolation.
- We revisit older reviews. Manufacturing quality can drift between print runs or factory batches, so we periodically re-test popular products and update our verdicts if something has changed.
- We talk to the community. We cross-reference our impressions against feedback from magic clubs, juggling forums, and workshop students to make sure we're not the only ones seeing a particular strength or flaw.
What Makes Palm Patter Trustworthy
We know the review space is crowded with sites that exist purely to push affiliate links, regardless of whether the product is any good. We've built Palm Patter around a different standard.
- Independent opinions, always. No manufacturer or retailer gets to preview or approve a review before it's published, and none has editorial input over our ratings.
- Clear disclosure. When a link on our site is an affiliate link, or when we received a free review sample, we say so plainly on the page. It never changes our verdict.
- We publish the negatives. If a trick has a glaring flaw, a prop breaks easily, or a set of instructions is genuinely confusing, you'll read that in plain language. We'd rather lose an affiliate sale than send a reader toward a disappointing purchase.
- Real performers, real practice. Every recommendation is grounded in actual stage time, actual classroom teaching, or actual practice-space repetition, not a quick unboxing.
- We update and correct. If we get something wrong or a product changes, we revise the post and note the update rather than quietly editing it away.
Our goal is simple: when you land on a Palm Patter review, you should be able to trust that a real magician or juggler actually used the product, pushed it to its limits, and told you the truth about it. Whether you're buying your first deck of marked cards or your fifth set of competition juggling clubs, we want you to walk away with gear that earns its place in your routine.